Brian Slattery Photos
Stefan Christensen.
The healthy-sized audience at Cafe Nine on Wednesday night found itself treated to a night of improvised music that was somehow both energetic and soothing, harsh yet mellow, as three performances and a DJ set offered a chance to trance out from the cold.
The evening started off with DJ Caren from Redscroll Records, spinning deep cuts of rock, pop, and jazz as the crowd slowly filled the room. She was playing jazz as Justin Shay headed toward the stage, which allowed for a nearly seamless musical handoff: as soon as the record ended, with a fading saxophone, Shay responded.
Musician Justin Michael Shay — who also hosts a radio show on Bridgeport’s WPKN — began his set by coaxing a series of deep drones out of his guitar like foghorns calling across a bay. As they resolved into a repeating figuring, Shay used guitar and harmonica to create a melody in slow motion, luxuriating in the instruments’ most soothing and harshest tones to create a mood that, in the end, felt oceanic and peaceful. Shay revealed at the end that the song was called “I Wanna Learn to Surf,” which, as the last ripple of music faded, seemed the most apt title possible for what the audience had just heard. His short, beautifully ambient set was met with hearty applause.
The New Haven-based musician Stefan Christensen started his set with layers of moody chords punctuated by glitches and percussive thuds, then a keen like a test signal. Before long these elements were calling and responding to one another, creating a setting, a rhythm, into which Christensen drove wrenching guitar chords. The sonic range of the set then expanded as Christensen introduced rumbling bass and a chorus of high frequencies like feedback. A sporadic drum roll kept something like time as Christensen used an e‑bow to shape a wailing guitar solo. As the end approached, the guitar faded into the background, overtaken by sweetly metallic drones and a soft chime. With steady deliberation, Christensen had led the audience through a wide range of moods and textures. His set was a long, colorful journey, and the whoops and hollers at the end indicated that the audience had enjoyed the ride.
The Philadelphia, Pa.-based musician Bill Nace was up last with a taishogoto, a Japanese instrument that’s something like an electric dulcimer with keys. Simply plugged into an amplifier, the instrument has a clear, ringing sound. In Nace’s hands, run through a series of effects pedals, it became a means to produce a continuous, thickly distorted sound. He began first by strumming the strings, then letting feedback take over to use both hands to manipulate the keys, which allowed him to make lightning strings of notes that seemed to be moving with great speed and, in the context of the wash of sound, almost standing still. The effect was both frenetic and peaceful, making it hypnotic. As he looped a couple figures, he was then able to use the instrument to produce a keening solo voice that let him develop his set further, until in time, he came back to where he started. He cut off the sound abruptly and nodded at the crowd, and there was spontaneous applause.
Across four sets of music, aside from Shay telling the crowd what the title of one of his songs was, perhaps five words were spoken, and most of those were a quick “thanks,” to indicate the end of a song. That was entirely in keeping with the mores of improvised music shows. The music was the only meaning there needed to be.